Good Blood Cannot Lie.
Chapt 1:
“Bon sang ne peut mentir.”
"Messieurs! Faites vos jeux," the croupiers were crying for the hundredth time, their voices, inviting players to stake their counters of hundred or five hundred franc notes upon the spin of the red and black wheel. It was March; the height of the Riviera season and that afternoon the tense atmosphere of gambling was laden with the combined odours of perspiration and Chanel No 9.
Around each table were crowds four or five deep behind those fortunate enough to obtain seats, all eager and anxious to try their fortune upon the rouge or noir, or upon one of the thirty-six numbers, the columns, or the transversales. There was but little conversation. The assembled well-dressed idlers escaping the winter were too intent upon the game. But above the click of the plaques, as they were raked into the bank by the croupiers, and the clatter of counters as the lucky players were paid with deft hands, there rose the insistent chant:
"Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!"
Here English duchesses rubbed shoulders with the most notorious women in Europe, and men who at home in England were exemplary fathers and church attendees, laughed in a relaxed fashion with attired cocottes from Paris, dubious unknown posers and aspiring celebrities, the latter, invariably over endowed with excitable vocal cords and too much eye contact.
Upon that wide polished parquet floor of the splendidly decorated rooms, with their mural paintings and heavy gilt ornamentation, the world and the half-world were upon an equal footing.
Into that stifling atmosphere—for the Administration of the Bains de Mer of Monaco seem as afraid of fresh air as of purity propaganda—the afternoon sunlight struggled through the curtained windows, while over each table, in addition to the electric light, oil-lamps shaded green with a billiard-table effect cast a dull illumination upon the eager countenances of the players.
Certain stereotypes could be discerned. The smart women from Paris, Vienna, or Rome that tended never to lose their heads and that gambled always discreetly. The fashionable high class working girls that seldom lost much. They gambled at the tables “petite au petite” and made eyes at men whether they won or lost. If the latter they generally obtained a "loan" from somebody.
And it was strange to see respectable Englishwoman admiring the same daring costumes of the French pseudo-"countesses" at which they had held up their hands in horror when they have seen them pictured before in Vogue.
On that particular day in one of these salles-de-jeu, a rather striking lady was experiencing quite a run of luck. To the men, both young and seasoned that viewed her, the dark eyes suffused a glow of liquid depths and bare shoulders of delicate proportions exuded a glimpse of a bedroom potential.
But "Mademoiselle," as the croupiers always called her, was usually lucky. She was an experienced, and therefore a careful player. When she staked a maximum it was not without very careful calculation upon the chances. Mademoiselle was well known to the Administration. Often her winnings were sensational, hence she served as an advertisement to the Casino, for her success always induced the uninitiated and unwary to stake heavily, and usually with disastrous results.
The green-covered gaming table, at which she was sitting next to the end croupier on the left-hand side, was crowded. She had won four maximums en plein within the last half-hour, and the crowds around the table noting her good fortune were now following her. Time after time she let the coups pass. The croupiers' invitation to play did not interest her. Long artistic fingers simply toyed with her purse, or touched her dozen piles or so of plaques.
Then, Mademoiselle won the maximum upon the number four, as well as the column, and the croupier was in the act of pushing towards her a big pile of counters each representing a thousand francs.
The eager excited throng around the table looked across at her with envy. But her countenance was expressionless. Counting out twenty-five counters she gave them to the croupier and said quietly:
"Zero-trois!"
Next moment a dozen persons followed her play, staking their all upon the spot where she had asked the croupier at the end of the table to place her stake.
"Messieurs! Faites vos jeux!" came the cry again.
Then a few seconds later the croupier called:
"Rien ne vas plus!"
The red and black wheel was already spinning, and the little ivory ball sent by the croupier's hand in the opposite direction was clicking quickly over the numbered spaces.
The eyes of men and women, fevered by the gambling mania, watched the result. Slowly it lost its impetus, and after spinning about unevenly it made a final jump and fell with a loud click.
"Zer-r-o!" cried the croupier.
And a moment later Mademoiselle had pushed before her at the end of the croupier's rake another pile of counters, while all those who had followed the remarkable woman's play were also paid.
Down the table one of the regulars lent towards her companion.
"Everyone tries to discover who she is, and where she came from five years ago. But nobody has yet found out. Even Monsieur Bernard, the chief of the Surveillance, does not know," she went on in a whisper.
"He is a friend of mine, and I asked him one day. She came from Paris, he told me. She may be American, she may be Belgian, or she may be English. She speaks English and French so well that nobody can tell her true nationality."